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OpenMobile to let Android apps run on Tizen

OpenMobile says it is looking for device manufacturers to add its proprietary software to their future Tizen devices so they can run Android applications. The company showed Facebook and Guitar Hero running on an Exo PC at the recent CTIA conference, though not apparently under a Tizen UI. A video of the apps running was recorded by The Handheld Blog.

Tizen, the effective successor to the MeeGo project, is a collaboration between Intel and Samsung under the aegis of the Linux Foundation. The mobile operating system will have a native application layer for its core services, while third party applications are expected to be written with HTML5, JavaScript, CSS and related web technologies. OpenMobile believes that it can assist Tizen device makers by giving them an option to tap into the existing Android ecosystem of over 400,000 apps.

OpenMobile's ACL (Application Compatibility Layer) for MeeGo/Tizen product will join its ACL for Windows and ACL for WebOS products in allowing applications to run on those platforms. All versions of ACL appear to be based around a port of the Android runtime environment and Dalvik VM to the target platform. The company claims it is "100% compatible" and "runs every single Android App – no exceptions". It makes use of OpenGL for 3D graphics, implements Android sandboxing, and says it can support Android API level 4 and greater and NDK 6 and greater.

ACL is closed source software; as the upper layers of Android are Apache licensed, developers who take the code are not required to release the source code of their changes. No pricing for ACL is available either as it is aimed at OEMs. If the ACL software works as claimed and was widely installed on Tizen devices it could slow down the creation of web-application-style HTML5 applications for the platform.